How Hard Can Love Be?

by Holly Bourne

  I stood up, just for wanting something to do. It was already busier. Tourists streamed up the last staircase, loads in anoraks, some with special walking sticks – all with cameras. A queue had already formed to get your photo taken at the top of the waterfall. They’d finally caught us up.

  Kyle stood up too.

  “Amber?”

  “I don’t know what to do.” It was true.

  “Be with me,” he said, simply, clasping at my hand. The words melted in the hot air around me. A boy was standing on top of a waterfall, saying he wanted to be with me… Why was I closing him off?

  “I don’t know who you are.”

  I watched my words break him. His gorgeous face fell, his smile disintegrated. Yet I kept on talking. It was true, I had no idea who he was – not really. “I live in England. You kissed Melody.” They both seemed equally important. “I guess I’m just shocked.”

  “Shocked?”

  “I didn’t see any of this coming,” I said.

  He went to take my hand again but didn’t.

  “How could you not?”

  He asked it so genuinely and I didn’t have the answer. It hadn’t really occurred to me that Kyle would like me, not really. Yeah, I’d fantasized about it – got confused by his signs, maybe entertained the thought – but that’s different from believing it. I was struggling to take in how everything had changed so quickly. My brain was in full-on compute mode, trying to slot everything into place like a jigsaw, but none of the pieces fitted together.

  Why would he like me anyway?

  Why did he get with Melody?

  What did I do now?

  Would it just be a summer thing?

  Is this real?

  And why the hell did he get with Melody?

  “I thought maybe I was a charity project…”

  It was hard to talk about my feelings. I’d never known how unnaturally it came until I’d come here, to this strange country, where they talk the same language but vomit up so many honest feelings all day that it was a totally different tongue. The other day Whinnie had asked Russ, “Good morning, all good with you?” And rather than answering like every British person would – “Fine, how are you?” – even if half your leg had come off in the night and you were oozing blood all over the floor… No, Russ answered honestly. “I slept like crap. My back hurts, I think I pulled it.” And Whinnie didn’t look at him like he was breaking a secret code or something, like you would in England.

  Kyle pulled a face.

  “Why would you be a charity project?” he asked.

  “Because of my mum. Because I’m in a new country. Because I would never in a million years ever be Homecoming Queen.”

  Kyle made this grunt of anger and stepped away from me. “Have you not been listening? I really, really like you, Amber. I love that you’d never be Homecoming Queen. I love that you’d never want to be Homecoming Queen…”

  Well that wasn’t true. Every girl, secretly, wanted to be Homecoming Queen. Even if we didn’t even have them at home.

  “Don’t you hear what I’m saying, none of it means anything? I hate that I live a life that doesn’t mean anything. But this –” he took my hand – “my feelings for you mean something. I know we’ve only known each other a few weeks but, like I said…straight away, on that first night…I just needed to know you.”

  My hand glowed hot at his touch, like it was agreeing with him.

  I laughed. I don’t know why.

  “This is all very dramatic,” I said, trying to break the atmosphere. “Can’t we just go explore the rest of the park or something?”

  I was pushing him away. I didn’t know why, but I was pushing him away. Hard.

  His eyes dropped to where our hands were entwined. He let go.

  “Yeah, sure, whatever.” He faked a laugh. “Sorry, I had it all planned in my head… I didn’t mean to ambush you. I thought…” He trailed off.

  Oh the awkward, so much of the awkward. Why wasn’t I kissing him? Why wasn’t I telling him how I felt? Was it because I was scared? Did I even know how I felt? I needed the girls here. Lottie would just tell me to “mount him” and worry about it afterwards. Evie could give me all her hand-me-down therapy. We could work it out together. I didn’t trust me to work it out. I just messed everything up, like I had now.

  It was getting so busy. The streams of tourists had become rivers. An unyielding tide of them huffed past the summit, sitting all around us with selfie sticks, cracking open plastic boxes stuffed with sandwiches, handing them out to each other. This was not the place to make any decisions… There was no space for us, and all the emotions catapulting between us right now. I looked once more at Kyle – GOD, he was good-looking, even with the pained expression on his face that made me feel guilty. I couldn’t believe I had kissed him only moments ago.

  I spoke. “At the risk of sounding very American indeed, can I have some time to process all this? And, in the meantime, can we just have a very nice day?”

  Another sad smile. A determined-not-to-look-sad smile.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m really, really happy you brought me here. You have no idea…”

  “You just weren’t expecting to get sexually harassed at the top of the waterfall.” It was his turn to awkwardly laugh. He started walking away from me.

  God I hated him walking away from me.

  “That wasn’t sexual harassment,” I called after him, and a few groups of tourists looked round. I caught up with Kyle, glowing red. We burst out laughing.

  “And now everyone is looking at us,” he said.

  “Yeah, I do that a lot. Say the wrong thing.”

  “I’ve noticed.” He very carefully tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. It sprang back right away.

  “My hair doesn’t care that you’re trying to be romantic right now,” I said. Kyle let out a proper belly laugh at that.

  “It’s got your spirit.”

  “It’s got itself into a humid environment. No amount of lovely, romantic hair-tucking will overcome its need to respond to a humid environment.”

  “Are we still talking about your hair?” His eyes were laughing, dancing. I wanted to kiss him. Why did I keep not kissing him? WHY!?

  “God knows. Now, how do we get off this waterfall?”

  SITUATIONS THAT ARE DESTINED TO FAIL:

  Awkward silences

  +

  Rafting with just one other person

  Twenty-one

  We had to descend against a mad flow of tourists to get down off Vernal Falls. Like salmon going upstream, but, like…down a waterfall. We stumbled through, saying “excuse me” a lot to groups of people clutching trail mix, our knees aching as we got all wet in the mist again. I didn’t look back to see the rainbows on the way down. I wanted to remember this place as we’d had it, when it was ours.

  Eventually we got to the bottom and queued to get the shuttle bus.

  “Where now?” I asked, thinking youkissedmeyoukissedmeyoukissedmeyoukissedme.

  “How are you at rafting?”

  “What did you say, please?”

  “Rafting? Like, paddling a raft down a river. They hire them out here, and you can take the river right through the park.”

  “Kyle, you have seen me try to do water sports. I had to get rescued. By you, in fact.”

  “Rafting’s easier.”

  “Hmm.”

  We got the now-crammed shuttle bus into the centre of the park, and Kyle expertly navigated us to the hire shop.

  “How do you know this place so well?”

  “I live in a small town not too far from Yosemite,” Kyle said. “Everyone in my town works here. I’d go call on Mom, but they’re in Florida for two weeks.”

  Some guys who looked just like Wayne equipped us with life jackets and gave us a quick course in how to paddle. (“See, this is what I needed before, basic instructions,” I said.) Soon we were dragging the raft into the coldest river water the world has ever
known.

  I had lots of anti-feminism thoughts as Kyle got us all sorted and paddling along. Thoughts like, It’s so nice having a guy to carry most of the weight of this raft. And, It’s actually really sexy how masculine he looks when he paddles. And, Oh those arms, why aren’t you frickin’ kissing someone back who has arms like that, AMBER?

  But, as we got into the swing of paddling, the sheer magnificence of our surroundings made my busy brain quieten right down. Everything we floated past blew my mind – its scale, as well as its beauty. We drifted past Half Dome again, the sun now shining on it full force, making the flat face glint almost silver. We paddled through bits of the park inaccessible on foot and all I could hear were the sounds of our isolated surroundings. It was like one of those nature CDs you buy in hippy shops to help you sleep. The back of Kyle’s head was also, well, a pretty gorgeous thing to look at. How could I fancy the back of someone’s head? I watched his strong arms work the paddles, and tried to guess what he was thinking, how he was feeling. I still couldn’t believe he liked me like that… That he’d been feeling like that about me. The thought was intoxicating.

  He’d seen me last night, covered in sick and crying, and he still wanted me…

  “Amber, Jeez, paddle, we’re about to hit the leg of that bridge.”

  After about forty minutes, Kyle stopped us at a tiny pebbled beach that jutted into the river. We dragged the raft up, and he got out some sandwiches he’d made, passing me one. We ate in semi-contented, semi-awkward silence, watching other rafts float past us – some filled with giggling kids that made me sort of miss camp, some filled with families, a few couples, like us. It was like being on the most beautiful and calm theme park ride ever.

  “I’m beat,” Kyle said. “Can we just lie here for a bit? The early morning’s catching up with me.”

  He put his big bare feet up on the cushiony side of the raft, pulled his baseball cap over his eyes and just kinda zonked out.

  I watched the rise and fall of his chest as he sank into a deep nap, wanting so much to touch him. My skin prickled with the first hints of sunburn, so I took my pale self away from direct sunlight and sat under a pine tree, trying to figure out my feelings. I tried to draw for a bit, pulling my sketchpad out of the waterproof bag we’d been given, but I couldn’t concentrate.

  I had a few inclinations about why I may not be kissing Kyle back.

  The first, he had kissed Melody. Yes, get over it, Amber. He said it meant nothing, but that kind of made it worse… And, like, why was he all down on himself? Saying he was generic and clichéd and whatever? What did that even mean? Did he just like me because I’m not an obvious girl for someone like him to fancy?

  Mainly though, I was only here for a month.

  And then what? Even in the happiest of scenarios, we’d fall for each other and have a month of kisses… God that sounded nice actually… But then I’d still have to go back to England. Wouldn’t that hurt, like, a lot? It’s not like we’d start a long-distance relationship. I was only seventeen, he lived in America, we were too young for that probably…

  Also wouldn’t he go off me if he got to know me? Like my actual mum – giver of my birth – had gone off me. What chance did I have with Mr Prom King?

  Basically, I figured it out. This situation – kissing Kyle, letting him in. Whatever happened, it was destined to fail. It was doomed. The only possible outcome would be Amber gets hurt. I didn’t do getting hurt very well… Why get myself involved in something that would break me?

  It hurt already. It hurt not to go over and kiss him, knowing that’s what we both wanted. It would hurt putting my feelings to one side but I’d be protecting myself from stronger, worse feelings a few weeks down the line. The knot in my stomach would be like a lead ball of…umm… lead if one more thing happened between us.

  Kyle could get over it, look how he’d gotten over Melody already.

  I knew I couldn’t.

  When Kyle snorted himself awake, half an hour later, my mind was made up.

  Protect me protect me protect me.

  He looked over the top of the raft, his eyes so wide and earnest that I knew he was asking me a silent question.

  I looked back at him, hurting so much more than I should be, and gave him my silent reply.

  He looked down, and coughed.

  We hadn’t said a word, and yet we both knew it was over. Over before it really began. It was the only way really – unless I was a masochist.

  I clambered back into the raft and we wordlessly paddled ourselves out into the steady swell of the river. I stared and stared at the back of his head as we floated past beautiful view followed by beautiful view, and tried to swallow down the tears that were wedged in my throat.

  No reason to cry, Amber. Nothing has been lost. You’re just being smart. Less hurt now to avoid more hurt later.

  It’s weird how the inside of your head can ruin such stunning exterior moments of your life. As we passed the Yosemite Falls, my head didn’t take it all in and think, Wow, this is so awesome, be humbled, Amber, be humbled. Nope, it was whirring and churning about Kyle, about my mum, about me. Introspection, self-loathing, thinking, whinging, upset, all the time time time. I may as well have been looking at the view from Bognor Regis train station.

  The river got quieter, smoother, even the views calmed down a bit. I could tell we’d been through the golden bit of the raft tour. We still didn’t talk. Not even when I got us stuck under another bridge. Not when we came to the end of the rafting zone of the river, greeted by tanned topless boys who waved and helped us drag the raft up onto the beach. Not when we waited for the shuttle bus to return us to the top of the river again.

  Kyle kept looking at me, like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.

  “Wanna go see Yosemite Falls one last time?” he asked, finally.

  I nodded.

  We walked to the wild-flower meadow I’d seen when we first drove into the park. It seemed so long ago. So much had happened since sunrise.

  “It really is pretty.” My words sounded empty and forced.

  “Yep.” So did his.

  “Can we get any closer?”

  “Yeah, there’s a trail.”

  The “trail” was a walkway made of wooden platforms and rammed full of people. The entire world appeared to be there to have their photo taken. We had to dodge and weave like we were on the London Underground in rush hour.

  “Why is it so busy?” I asked, as we waited for a couple to finish taking photos of each other so we didn’t walk in front of their shot. They thanked us and we walked past.

  “It’s American law that the national parks are for the people, they belong to us, they can’t limit how many people come in,” Kyle explained. “Good idea in theory. In reality it means they’re all too busy to enjoy properly.”

  I could hear the thrash of the waterfall. A few more metres and a right-hand turn and we were right at the bottom of it. The water hit the rocks, spraying everyone on the cute viewing bridge with water.

  I leaned over the railing, closing my eyes so I could feel the spray hit my face better. It felt good on the heat of my skin. There were no rainbows here though…

  “That’s interesting,” I said. “That America sort of protects them, and then ruins them like that.”

  “Amber?”

  I opened my eyes. “Yes?”

  “Why are we talking like we’re at a bad dinner party?”

  I turned my head, and he looked so pained. He gripped the railings so hard he had white bumps on his fists.

  “We are?” I played dumb.

  “We really are. You just walked past an entire group of cheerleaders on tour, all wearing matching hot pants with sexy nicknames monogrammed across their butt cheeks and you didn’t launch into a rant.”

  “There was?”

  How did I not see that? That definitely would’ve annoyed me!

  “Yep. They got off a coach. They’re right behind us on the trail. They were
taking so many selfies we overtook them.”

  I tried to smile. “I thought Melody and her friends were in LA?”

  “Stop changing the subject.”

  “I’m not…”

  “You are. Look…” He ran his hands over his face. “I know I’ve messed up, okay? I shouldn’t have kissed you…”

  He shouldn’t?!

  “… It wasn’t fair of me to just maul you like that. I just thought it was…mutual…”

  It IS mutual! But…

  “But it’s been so much fun just to be your friend these last few weeks. I would be majorly bummed if I messed that up. So, can we just forget this morning ever happened?”

  I could never forget that morning had ever happened – the mist, the rainbows, the way Kyle’s mouth tasted, the way a big frozen part of me melted when we kissed again, a part of me that had frozen right back up the moment I’d wrecked it all with my overthinking.

  “Amber, please? Can you just talk to me? You’re never not talking!”

  I whipped around. “Hey!”

  We both smiled.

  “Yay, I got words out of you.”

  “I…”

  I opened my mouth to explain my thinking. All I wanted to do was just grab him and bury myself into him and say, I really like you, and even though I don’t know you very well, I think I want to be with you, but you’re a fucking Prom King and you live in America and I fly away in less than a month and your heart will heal but mine really really won’t.

  But he held out his hand to stop me.

  “You don’t have to say anything, or explain anything. Can we just go back to how it was? Like, six hours ago?”

  It couldn’t, both of us knew that. But when has denial ever been ignored as a very useful coping mechanism?

  “In that case,” I said, smiling, “can we go find these cheerleaders? I want to take photos to show Lottie and Evie.”

  Just as I said it, they appeared over the slope. We watched as they all bent over to spell a word that was formed by the letters sewn onto their bums – posing so long, as all of them wanted a photo taken on their phone, that they caused a queue for the waterfall.

  I laughed so hard, Kyle had to hold me up. Then I told him all about Female Chauvinist Pigs, and he listened and smiled and didn’t touch me. We drove out of the park and went for dinner at this cute youth hostel up in the mountains called the Yosemite Bug, and he didn’t touch me. And we drove out into the night, talking, but not touching, until eventually we pulled up at some dubious-looking motel and collapsed into separate beds, not touching.